


did it hurt (when you fell from heaven)?

by Haberdasher



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Angels, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Office, Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Angel Wings, Angels, Back Pain, Bisexual Tim Stoker (The Magnus Archives), Black Sasha James, Blood, Chronic Pain, Developing Relationship, F/M, Hiding, Hurt/Comfort, Morning After, POV Sasha James, Pain, Romance, Tim Stoker Being Tim Stoker (The Magnus Archives), Trans Character, Trans Female Character, Trans Male Character, Trans Sasha James, Trans Tim Stoker (The Magnus Archives), Transformation, Urban Fantasy, Wings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-12-26
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:27:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 6,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26957305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Haberdasher/pseuds/Haberdasher
Summary: The world is changing now, and many of its inhabitants are changing with it.They are calling it a Transangelic Epidemic: the sudden and monstrous transformation of hundreds of good citizens.Sasha James doesn’t think it’s anything she should be concerned about until, after spending the night with a coworker who’s more than just a coworker, her back begins to ache...
Relationships: Sasha James/Tim Stoker
Comments: 10
Kudos: 55





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Transangelic Exodus](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26181811) by [spacecuppa (EmmaLikesTheInternet)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmmaLikesTheInternet/pseuds/spacecuppa). 



Sasha woke up in Tim’s bed after a night which she hasn’t quite decided whether she regrets or not with twin pains just below her shoulder blades.

It took her a moment to realize that the pain in her back was unconnected to the dull roar in her head, that the headache was an anticipated (albeit still begrudged) consequence of the night she’d just had while the backache must be something else entirely. Calling it a backache was downplaying it, really; the pain was sharper than that, like she was laying on a row of thumbtacks instead of a soft if disheveled bed.

Sasha stretched her arms out above her head, which managed both to make her backache worse, somehow, and to plant her elbow squarely in Tim’s face, without actually helping her feel more awake in the process.

“Shit, Tim, I’m so sorry-”

“‘s fine, ‘s fine.” His voice sounded slightly muffled, even after Sasha moved her arm so that it was well out of his way. “I’ll live.”

Sasha pushed the blanket on top of her further down until it was a crumpled mess near the foot of the bed. “Is that your standard? Either you don’t live or it’s fine?”

“Pretty much. Especially when there’s someone cute involved.” Tim looked Sasha dead in the eye and shot her a dramatic, exaggerated wink, adding in finger guns after a moment when her expression didn’t change.

“Aww, you think I’m cute, how sweet of you.”

“You _do_ remember what happened last night, right?”

Sasha seriously considered beaning Tim with the nearest pillow before thinking better of it, instead replying only with an overly-chipper, “Trying not to!”

“Ah. Got it.”

Sasha sat up gingerly, trying her best to notice which movements made her back twinge with additional pain as she did so.

"You alright, Sash?”

Sasha looked over at Tim. The levity in his voice was gone, and now he was watching her closely, eyes focused on her every move.

“I am... somewhere in between fine and not alive, personally.”

Tim snorted softly with amusement. “Hangover that bad?”

“Well, there’s that, yes, but... I didn’t slam my back into something last night and then forget all about it, did I? Because it’s been aching something awful.”

Tim paused, closing his eyes for a brief moment before opening them again as he began to speak. “No, I don’t remember anything like that happening, and I think I would remember, last night was _pret-ty_ memorable...”

Sasha had to fight back the urge to bean Tim with a pillow again.

“Anything I can do to help? Grab some paracetamol, give you a massage, call 999...”

Sasha rolled her eyes in response to Tim’s final suggestion. “It’s just a backache, Tim.” A bad one, true, and with no clear cause to boot, but then, such things happen. Sasha knew well enough that bodies didn’t always cooperate the way you wanted them to. “Maybe the paracetamol, but a massage would probably just make it _worse_.”

“Even from a master masseuse like me?” Somehow the smirk on Tim’s face just kept growing, and somehow Sasha could swear just the sight of it made her headache worse.

“You take _one_ massage class-”

“More than anyone else in the office has done, I bet.” The smirk faded away again as Sasha leaned forward in the hopes that it would help with at least one of the pains currently plaguing her, though it just made her head swim until she pressed her chest up against the bed, her head leaning against the mess she made of the sheets. “Where does it hurt?”

“Er...” Sasha tried to indicate the areas in question as best she could, though it was hard to reach behind her back and harder still to try to point out a specific part of it. “There’s two spots, right about _there_ I think--next to the shoulder blades, on both sides. Nothing looks weird back there, does it?”

Tim didn’t respond for a long moment, and Sasha’s mind immediately turned to the worst.

“Sasha, you... have you been following the news lately?”

Sasha let out a soft laugh, more out of relief than any actual humor. “What kind of a question is _that_? I guess so, yeah, why?”

“You know the whole... angel transformation thing they’ve been talking about lately? People growing wings and stuff?”

Sasha had already started to eke out a nonchalant “Yes” by the time she put the pieces together.

“ _No_.” she said instead, her voice coming out more like a scandalized teenager than she would have liked instead of that of a grown woman who was just realizing that she was standing on the edge of a cliff, trying futilely to deny the danger she was in even as she inched closer to the precipice.

“Maybe.” The levity was gone from Tim’s voice, and--Sasha reached over with one hand, scrabbled about until her hand hit her glasses and she could shove them unceremoniously onto her face--it was gone from his eyes as well. He seemed deadly serious now, something she wasn’t used to seeing from Tim.

Sasha would have liked to think that her blood ran cold at the thought of office jokester Tim finally turning so serious, but really, her blood ran hot and it was everything else that was cold; Sasha shivered a little, and part of her wondered if she could just bury herself under the blankets she had so hastily abandoned and stay there while the rest of the world kept on moving.

“Can I, uh--I remember them mentioning one way to test, but it might be awkward--well, it _will_ be awkward, it might be _worse_ than awkward-”

Sasha tilted her head slightly so that she was facing one of the blankets, so she didn’t have to look at Tim as she said, her voice slightly muffled by the fabric, “Go for it.”

She heard rather than saw Tim get up, head into another room, return with _something_ he seemed very careful about not dropping, but she didn’t look back up at him until-

It burned.

No, strike that. Whatever it was that had just hit her side wasn’t hot, wasn’t literally burning. It was the opposite, a cold so vivid and biting that it might as well have been burning, the extremes of the temperature scale seeming to somehow blend together.

Sasha heard a soft hissing sound as she tried to wipe off whatever had caused the not-burning, but only succeeded in getting it on her hand as well, though thankfully the pain was rapidly dulling.

“What was _that_?”

“Just water. Just cold water.” Tim demonstrated by flicking a few droplets onto himself and then, after a moment of hesitation, pouring the rest of the cup he was holding onto his head. Despite everything, Sasha couldn’t help but snicker at the sight of Tim’s wet hair, water droplets meandering their way down his face and onto the floor.

Sasha remembered, dimly, having heard something about angels running unnaturally hot, about how rain would evaporate when it hit their skin.

It had been unusually dry in the past month or two, especially for London. Sasha couldn’t remember the last time she’d gotten caught out in the rain.

“...shit.”

“Yeah.” Tim hesitated briefly before adding, “‘m sorry.”

“It’s not _your_ fault.” Sasha leaned onto her side, her head still aching. “Not unless you _make_ it your fault, anyway.”

“...I’m not going to report you, if that’s what you mean. God, no.”

Sasha wanted to scream out of an open window. Sasha wanted to bury her face in a pillow. Sasha’s head was still swimming and she wasn’t as sure as she had been that it was just because of a fleeting hangover.

“Might as well. Somebody will.”

“I won’t let that happen. _We_ won’t let that happen.”

“What are we going to do, then? What _can_ we do?”

They made it sound like a good thing, somehow, in all the news bits and public service announcements, that the whole government was against these angels. Just report it to the authorities and the problem would go away. They couldn’t explain it, not yet, but they could contain it until they learned enough to solve the problem at its source, and they would do everything in their power to protect good human citizens from being corrupted by these new angelic monstrosities.

Sasha could swear she’d always been a little skeptical of that framing, even before she herself became one of those monstrosities.

But the point remained: there were two of them, and many, many more of the authorities looking for people just like her, people on the verge of becoming angels.

Fighting would just get them killed. Running would just delay the inevitable. What else was there?

Sasha was on the verge of tears now, but Tim had a wry smile on his face as he spoke.

“What d’you think of us moving in together?”


	2. Chapter 2

“Tim, I’m trying to be serious here!” Sasha said.

“So am I.” Tim replied. “If the transformation is as bad as they say it is... hell, if it’s _half_ as bad as they say it is, things will be rough for you sometimes. But if you’re living with me, I can help lighten the load whenever you need me to. And if somehow word gets out that one Sasha James is an angel, well, your name won’t be on the lease, will it?”

That was... not where Sasha had thought Tim was going with this plan, but honestly, now that he laid it all out, it made a lot of sense.

Sasha sat up slowly, gingerly, the two lines on her back where wings would someday emerge still throbbing with pain. “And... and if anyone asks, we can just say I’m your live-in girlfriend, I suppose?”

“Exactly. And that they hadn’t heard because we’re trying to keep things on the down-low, take it slow, all that good stuff.”

Sasha nodded slowly as she processed it all, wrapped her head around the idea that she was turning into an angel (the same angels the government had been bashing for some time now) _and_ that Tim wanted her to move in with him at the same time. It was... it was a lot to take in at once.

“But I still can’t just hide in your house all day, I’ve got work... though it’s all on the computer, maybe HR will let me work at home if I tell them I’ve got a medical condition-”

“Which isn’t technically a lie, either.” Tim added, nodding along to Sasha’s words. “Good thing, too, because you’re rubbish with lying. Remember when you tried to throw me a surprise party?”

Sasha let out an exaggerated groan. “We do _not_ talk about the surprise party!”

“You know when you should have made that rule? _Before the surprise party_.”

Sasha let out another groan, this one even louder and more exaggerated than the first.

“Look, Sash, don’t overthink it. We’ll make it work. It’ll be fine.”

“Is this the ‘I’ll live’ variety of fine, or the kind of fine that literally everybody else in the world uses?”

Sasha was expecting Tim to return her banter with some of his own, but he actually stopped and thought the question through for a moment before responding. “Little of both, probably, but that’s better than nothing.”

“I suppose. Could be a lot better, too, though.”

“Well, that’s life for you. Still want that paracetamol?”

Sasha started to shrug, then stopped halfway through as the motion made the twin pains in her back stab all the harder, instead nodding, “Yeah, thanks.”

Tim walked away and Sasha just stared at the ground until he came back.

Was this really their brilliant plan to outwit the authorities, to just hide her in Tim’s house like a fugitive, hope nobody asks too many questions, and just wait until... until what? Until things magically got better all on their own?

She’d known well enough that the events of last night might upend her life, but this wasn’t at all what she had in mind.

“Here you go.” Tim returned with pills in one hand and a cup of water in the other; Sasha took both from him, but dipped one finger into the water gingerly, testing the temperature (unremarkable, lukewarm to the touch) before downing the lot.

“C’mon, I wasn’t going to do that to you!”

“I know, I, I didn’t- I just thought maybe _your_ idea of a good water temperature and _my_ idea of a good water temperature might be a bit out of sync.”

“...didn’t think of that, yeah, fair enough.”

Tim sat down next to Sasha on the bed, rocking the mattress gently as he did, and when Sasha glanced over at him she found that he too was studying the floor as if all the secrets of the world were hidden within its patterns.

“If, if we’re really going to do this-”

“I am if you are.” Tim didn’t hesitate in his response, even though Sasha hadn’t really been expecting one from him.

“We’re going to have to do a lot to prepare. We’ll have to rearrange some things around here, make it a proper living space for two, and I’ll have to look through your electronics, make sure nothing could be listening in on us...”

“Always thought you were paranoid about that stuff, honestly.” Tim added. “But now...”

“Now you know I’m just paranoid _enough_.” Sasha forced a smile onto her face, though she still wasn’t feeling it between the hangover and the nascent wings and the world rearranging itself in her sleep, and gently rammed her shoulder into Tim’s.

“Good thing we’ve got the whole weekend, huh?”

Sasha’s laugh, at least, was genuine. “Yeah, two whole days to rearrange my life-”

“Our lives.”

“Our lives, yes. You know that just makes it even harder?”

“Life would be boring without a little challenge, wouldn’t it?” Tim winked. Sasha groaned, but this time her heart wasn’t in it, not even for banter’s sake.

“But you’re right, we should start sooner rather than later. Just say the word and we can get going. And Sasha?”

Sasha looked back up at Tim--his eyes were fixed on hers, now. “Yes?”

“Welcome home.”

Sasha snorted, and the snort turned into a laugh, and Tim joined in not long after, and somehow they both ended up splayed out on the bed, limbs intertwined, still laughing at what their lives had become because laughter seemed preferable to the alternative.


	3. Chapter 3

The next two days were a blur of activity, of flailing around as Sasha and Tim worked together to patch her life up before it fell entirely to pieces.

Saturday was moving day, filled with a number of impromptu decisions about what to bring with and what must be left behind; so many of the things that Sasha took for granted as part of her everyday life simply wouldn’t fit in Tim’s place. Thankfully Tim had a car, and while it was an ugly old thing it sure as hell beat moving furniture using the Tube for transportation. Sasha sat down and ran the numbers and figured out that it was actually slightly cheaper for her to not break the lease on her flat, to keep paying for a shitty empty flat she had no intention of entering again for another couple months. Tim, gentleman that he is, insisted on doing most of the heavy lifting.

(Tim claimed that it was because “you’re already not feeling well, I don’t want to risk making things any worse on that front” and it was true, Sasha’s back still hurt like hell, and paracetamol didn’t do shit for the pain, but really, Tim, she could carry a bloody lamp without his assistance!

Maybe he was just trying to show off... or to lighten the load however he could, even if it came off as a bit unnecessary in Sasha’s eyes.

Her back still ached at the end of the day even without moving furniture much, though, so perhaps he had a point there.)

Then there was the rearranging of furniture, trying to find a way of turning what had been his and hers into one coherent _theirs_ , struggling to put away all the things that Sasha hadn’t wanted to go without and making a pile of extras to drop off at Oxfam another day. Sasha followed through on looking over the house for anything that could be watching them, and while it wasn’t as bad as she had feared, Tim _really_ needed to learn to keep his laptop’s webcam covered when he wasn’t using it.

(Admittedly, his claim that even secret agents deserved to see his pretty face up close and personal did get a laugh out of her, a laugh that she had badly needed after such a long day.)

Sunday, meanwhile, was when Sasha introduced herself to Tim’s neighbors.

Tim hadn’t been sold on the idea at first, but this wouldn’t be the first time Sasha made a point of letting her neighbors know who she was sooner rather than later, of making sure that she was seen as a friendly face rather than a stranger or intruder, though never before had the threat of being imprisoned or worse just for being herself been quite so literal.

She didn’t give many details, just said her name was Sasha, she was Tim’s girlfriend (butterflies fluttered a bit in her stomach the first few times she said it, and it still felt a bit like a lie, given that they hadn’t discussed things using that particular term just yet), she was moving into his place, and she thought she’d do the neighborly thing and say hello as she entered the neighborhood.

Sasha also came bearing biscuits, because who could think badly of a new neighbor who introduced themself with a plate full of biscuits at hand? 

(Maybe they’d report some vague, nebulous angel they discovered out and about, but hopefully not Sasha, not that nice girl living with Tim, the one who brought them biscuits when she moved in...)

They were homemade biscuits, too, which took some time to make, and Sasha wasn’t the world’s best baker and they ended up on the overdone side, but at the end of the night she and Tim got to sit around and talk trash while eating burnt biscuits, and that certainly wasn’t a bad way for her to wrap up the weekend.

Only time would tell if their work had been enough to protect her, but Sasha felt cautiously optimistic by the time she went to bed on Sunday night.


	4. Chapter 4

The Tube ride to work was longer starting from Tim’s place than Sasha was used to, and only some of that was time seeming to slow to a crawl as she planned and plotted and analyzed and worried and picked at her fingernails until they were half-torn to shreds, because if the strangers around her saw her as that weird woman picking at her fingernails then at least the strangers around her saw her as a _woman_ and not just as an _angel_ , and God, the Tube stations were already filling with fliers about missing people that had probably been transformed, probably been abducted by the authorities, probably would never return-

“Sash?”

And Tim was by Sasha’s side, his shoulder brushing against hers throughout this too-long ride, and Sasha couldn’t focus on much else when he was looking at her with that twinkle in his eyes.

“Sorry, just... God, this is taking forever, isn’t it?”

Tim squeezed her shoulder (gently, _so_ gently, careful to avoid the spots that still ached, the spots now well-covered by one of her thicker jumpers even though there was nothing anyone else could see there just yet). “Hey, just think of it this way--you’ll only have to do this once.”

Sasha laughed, though her heart wasn’t entirely in it, her eyes flitting between Tim’s face and the flyers they passed by, the ads reminding good citizens to report suspected transformations immediately. “I hope you’re right about that one.”

“Course I am.” And he grinned at that, one of Tim’s trademark wide grins that would’ve looked a bit awkward on anyone else but looked just right on him, though his dark eyes still looked back at her with a bit less levity. “When have I ever been wrong before?”

“Do you want the list alphabetized, or should I just go in chronological order?”

Tim poked Sasha’s side. Sasha poked Tim’s side right back.

A minute later, their stop finally came.

They didn’t hold hands on the way to the office, but the two of them walked side by side, and Sasha’s hand brushed against Tim’s more than once.

They parted ways when they get to the office, though, Tim going to his usual desk (though he turned around to shoot Sasha a wink before moving out of sight) while Sasha headed not to her own desk, but to the Human Resources department.

It wasn’t hard to find, thankfully, though Sasha had never gone to it before, at least not in person. (There had been times where she had considered it, times where she’d heard a coworker’s bigoted comment and thought about reporting them, but she always stopped herself in the end, worried that kicking up a fuss would just end with her being the one kicked to the curb.) She’d made sure she knew who the best person to contact directly about this sort of matter was, too, so it wasn’t long before Sasha strolled into the office of one Maryam Karim.

Maryam’s hair was the same pitch black as Sasha’s, though Maryam’s was much straighter than Sasha’s wild curls, and her skin was only a few shades lighter than Sasha’s own, a sight which brought a slight smile to Sasha’s face as she walked closer.

Maryam looked away from her computer and up at Sasha as she entered the office, closing the door behind her. “Can I help you?”

Sasha forced her genuine slight smile into a wider one. “I certainly hope so. My name is Sasha James, and I’m here to request that I be allowed to work from home as soon as possible. My work is all on the computer anyhow, and I’ve already made sure than my home computer will be more than capable of doing everything I do here in the office.”

Maryam’s face settled into a slight frown. “Now, I’m afraid we don’t generally allow our employees to work from home, but it’s possible that we could make an exception in your case. Might I ask why you wish to do so?”

“Of course. It’s required for medical reasons. More than that is between my doctors and myself, but rest assured that I’ve examined all possibilities, and coming to the office regularly simply isn’t feasible given the state of my current health conditions.”

It wasn’t a lie. That was the beauty of it--Sasha was a horrible liar, it was true, and she was fairly sure half the office knew as much, but _it wasn’t a lie_. Polished a bit, perhaps, couched in the sort of bureaucratic language that HR would hopefully eat right up, but true just the same, and the words flowed freely because of it.

“Right. Well, we certainly respect your medical privacy, Ms. James. Now, would this request be temporary or permanent in nature?”

Sasha hadn’t actually thought that far ahead. The authorities claimed that their work was all done in the name of preventing further transformations, and perhaps curing those who were currently undergoing them. Was that true, or just a smokescreen for their real agenda? And if a cure got released after all, would Sasha even want to take it?

“...I don’t know.” Another truth, though not a full one. “I suppose it’s best to assume that it’s permanent, and if I end up able to return to the office after all, I can let you know.”

“Alright, I’ll be sure to note as much. Now, as I said before, such requests are unusual, and I cannot guarantee that we will be able to fully accommodate yours, but you should receive an email letting you either way in a few weeks’ time-”

Sasha shook her head. “I can’t do this for a few weeks. I need this processed immediately.”

“It takes time for things to go through the system, Ms. James. Surely you can understand as much.”

“And surely _you_ can understand that not all medical needs can be put on hold for weeks at a time.”

“Well-”

Sasha leaned forward. Maryam had never offered the seat facing her desk, and Sasha had never gone ahead and taken the seat herself, so while Maryam was seated, Sasha remained standing in front of her. Sasha was abnormally tall for a woman, she knew that well enough, and while sometimes she disliked her height, she appreciated how it let her loom over Maryam that much more effectively now.

“May I be frank with you, Ms. Karim?”

Maryam blinked a few times before responding. “Certainly.”

“I’ve been underpaid here for years, criminally so when you compare my salary to industry standards. I think we both know why, and I think we both know that those reasons aren’t entirely legal. Combine that with certain comments I’ve heard from coworkers over the years and, well... it wouldn’t reflect well on the company, that much I know.”

Maryam’s face paled a bit, and Sasha felt a pang of sympathy, but she kept speaking just the same.

“I don’t want to make a big deal out of this. I certainly don’t want to have to hire a solicitor to pursue my claims in court. And I’m not asking for a promotion, or a raise, or anything like that. I simply want the company to accommodate my new medical disability, an accommodation that should be easy enough to make given my current work conditions. But if that’s not possible, well... I’ll have to contact my solicitor and take further steps from there.”

Silence filled the air for a long moment as Maryam looked up at Sasha and Sasha back down at Maryam.

“I don’t have the authority for this, I’ll have to consult my supervisor-”

“Call them up, then. I’ll be outside waiting.”

Sasha strode back out of Maryam’s office, gently closing the door behind her before she leaned against a nearby wall and waited.

She didn’t envy Maryam, really. It wasn’t her fault the system was built like this.

She didn’t regret anything she’d said, though, either.

And once that office door finally opened again, once Maryam looked over at Sasha with a conciliatory expression and an awkward grin, Sasha knew that her speech had been well worth it.


	5. Chapter 5

It took Sasha about a week and a half of working from home before it occurred to her that most people probably wouldn’t adapt to her current living situation nearly as well as she had.

Tim ran all her errands for her now to avoid her having to go out in public, though nothing about the change was visible just yet; it was easier to establish that she just wasn’t an errand-running sort of person than to set up a pattern of running errands out of the house and then avoid suspicion while suddenly breaking that pattern, after all. There were one or two where she’d still had to go in person, such as picking up her HRT from the chemist--she’d worn one of her heavier jumpers then, just in case--but by and large, Tim had it handled. Some people might have missed the errands, but honestly Sasha was just relieved to not have to deal with them anymore; it was easier to go about her life without thinking of when she’d be able to fit those in.

Not that her schedule was terribly difficult to fit things into to begin with, mind. That was the other thing. Most people’s social lives, especially in London, seemed to involve going to pubs regularly with a gaggle of friends or attending concerts every weekend... but Sasha had never really bothered with that sort of thing.

Sasha didn’t just spend all her time while working on the computer; the vast majority of her social life operated through it, too, and had for some years now.

She was a bit more careful about what she said online now, though. Sasha hadn’t told her Internet friends that anything was different, that she’d stopped going in to work or had bad back aches, though she’d thought about what she’d do if she had to bring any of that up, had prepared a few not-quite-lies about chronic illness and regular pain stopping her from going into the workplace. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust _them_ , exactly; she just knew how insecure their usual means of communication were, if somebody had a mind to get her data from them.

(If she did everything just right, of course, nobody would think of going after her data in the first place, but there was no use in hanging all her hopes on perfection there.)

The only person she’d ever really gone out to spend time with was Tim, and, well, living together made that rather unnecessary. They spent plenty of time together now, and she didn’t really mind the scenery changing less than it had before when the time spent together was the same. Why go sit in a pub drinking overpriced booze and watching whatever happened to be on the pub telly when she could sit at home in her own furniture drinking regularly-priced booze and watching whatever she damn well pleased?

The one thing Sasha missed most from having to stay at home 24/7 was a little coffee shop that was a block away from her old flat. She’d been something of a regular there, bringing her laptop and hanging out there for hours while nursing a sugary coffee; the workers there all knew her name and order by heart, and a couple of them even gave her the employee discount by now. If she closed her eyes and thought about it hard enough she could practically smell it, the scent of coffee and pastries in the air that always seemed to make the day that much more enjoyable.

Sasha didn’t know if there were any similar coffee shops by Tim’s place ( _their_ place, now). It didn’t really matter, though; she couldn’t go anyway, couldn’t risk triggering suspicion by becoming a regular somewhere and then up and vanishing one day when her transformation became too great to hide.

If she wanted sugary coffee and pastries, she would just have to make them herself.


	6. Chapter 6

Sasha knew that the pain was only the beginning.

It didn’t _feel_ that way, of course. The pain felt like an end unto itself. It was always present at least slightly, but some days were worse than others. Some days, Sasha couldn’t focus on anything besides the pain, couldn’t bring herself to do anything besides lay in bed and wish she was asleep. (She couldn’t even sleep how she used to anymore; Sasha used to sleep on her back, but now that was right out unless she wanted to make the pain ten times worse.)

Paracetamol, as it turned out, didn’t do jack shit for it.

Sasha kept taking the maximum dosage regularly anyway, just in case _this_ time it helps.

(More than once the thought crossed her mind of taking _more_ than the safe maximum dosage, even though she knows that overdoses are nothing to mess with. Part of her thought the risk might be worth it if it brings actual relief. Part of her wondered if it’d even come with the same risks, given that her biology wasn’t entirely human anymore.

Sasha wasn’t willing to find out the hard way, though.)

But the pain was just the first step of the journey, the tip of the iceberg when it comes to her transformation, and while part of Sasha wanted to avoid every mention of the transangelic epidemic she can, part of her clung to every description of the angelic transformation she comes across, desperate for information about what will come next.

As it happened, she didn’t even notice the bleeding until her office chair was soaked halfway through with blood.

It didn’t hurt any worse than usual, was the thing. Her back ached, but it was just that, the same dull ache she had grown almost accustomed to by now. And she’d been busy working at the time, had been focused on doing her job rather than... well, rather than paying attention to her body, to the liquid oozing out from her back.

So she only found out what had been happening when she got up from her chair after a few hours of steady work and saw that the back of the chair she had been using was absolutely covered in blood.

A quick peek in the bathroom mirror revealed that the shirt she was wearing--thankfully not one of her _best_ work blouses, but still a decent business casual one, one she’d expected to last for several months if not years longer--was soaked entirely through, its vibrant yellow hue turned to vivid red, Unsalvageable.

Sasha took a few deep breaths, threw the ruined blouse in the trash, put some damp rags between her back and the chair’s, and kept working. Her workday wasn’t over yet, and she knew she’d catch hell from her supervisor if she didn’t keep up with her usual working pace while working for home.

Besides, she wasn’t sure how to get blood out from the back of an office chair, especially without getting it all over everything else around her in the process, and given the circumstances, Googling it was _not_ an option.

Sasha half-expected the work day to drag on endlessly after that, but it went by quickly enough, and she’d half-forgotten about the state her chair was in by the time Tim came home from work.

Tim reminded her quickly enough of the reality of the situation, though.

“Shit, is- is that _blood_ on your chair? Sash, you okay?”

“I’m fine, it’s, it’s fine. To be expected, really, I suppose... might have to get a new chair down the line, though. Blood doesn’t really fit my aesthetic, you know?”

Sasha laughed at her own joke, but Tim didn’t laugh along, which was what really drove home to her how concerned he must be.

“No, no, I bet I can fix the chair up still. Blood’s not _that_ hard to get out really, not if you know what you’re doing.”

“How do you know how to-”

Sasha stopped herself mid-sentence as she realized exactly why, biologically speaking, Tim probably had experience cleaning up blood over the years.

Tim raised an eyebrow, but when he spoke up, he didn’t call her out on her lapse, just said, “Well, _obviously_ it’s because of that murder spree I went on as a teenager. Don’t tell me you forgot about that already?”

“Tim!” Sasha was suddenly very glad she’d swept the house for electronic devices that might be listening in on them, as they might well have believed this newest line of Tim’s.

“Sasha.” Tim shot a grin her way, but that grin faded quickly as he looked back at the bloodstained chair. “Are... are you going to be okay? Can you get up without my help?”

“Yes, Tim, I can manage that much, I told you, I’m-”

As Sasha stood up, as much to prove a point as to actually go anywhere, the blood fled from her head and the room began to swim until she sat back down again.

“Fine?” Tim smirked as he finished Sasha’s sentence for her. “Here, let me give you a hand.”

“Hope you don’t mind that hand getting covered in blood...”

“Hey, wouldn’t be the first time.” A beat, then, “Again, teenage murder spree. God, Sasha, it’s like you’re not even listening.”

Sasha dissolved into giggles, her laughter not entirely subsiding even as Tim helped her out of her chair and onto her side on the couch, covering her in towels and blankets and heating pads.

Not bandages, though. They tried putting exactly one plaster on her back, and the feeling of that lone plaster against her wound was enough to get Sasha shivering and curled up into a ball until Tim took it off again. Not only did it hurt, it felt _wrong_ somehow, coarse and restrictive despite how small it was compared to the wound it was attempting to cover up.

Sasha’s eyes grew heavy as she watched Tim begin cleaning her chair for her, and though it was still fairly early in the evening, it wasn’t long before she was fast asleep.

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked this, consider following me on tumblr at [haberdashing](https://haberdashing.tumblr.com/)!


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